Americanization; Civics; Immigrants -- United States; Naturalization -- United States; Noncitizens -- United States
By Executive Order, March 1, 1905, President Roosevelt created
a special commission, consisting of Milton D. Purdy, Assistant
Attorney-General representing the Department of Justice, chairman;
Gaillard Hung, chief of the Bureau of Citizenship in the Department
of State, representing that department, and Richard K. Campbell,
attorney for the Immigration Bureau in the Department of Commerce
and Labor (now Commissioner of Naturalization in the Department of
Labor), “to investigate and report on the subject of naturalization
in the United States,” and to recommend changes in the naturalization
laws.[60] The commission’s report is invaluable in any study of the
subject of Naturalization Law and Procedure.
The average citizen scarcely realizes how completely the
Naturalization Law of 1906, which was the fruit of the labors of
this commission, has revolutionized the whole business. Whatever
may be the defects of the law, or of the practice which has grown
up under it, they are in the main due to “leaning over backward”
in the honest effort to clean and keep clean the flow of new blood
into our citizenship. Generally speaking, it is to be said that the
enforcement of this statute has abolished most of the evils of fraud
and exploitation which before that were a scandal and a menace in
American political life.
By this act the Naturalization Service was established and an
absolutely new era initiated. As Mr. Campbell, who forthwith
became chief of the Division of Naturalization in the Bureau of
Immigration,[61] said in his report for the fiscal year ending June
30, 1908, the process of becoming naturalized as an American citizen
... has acquired (even after so short an operation of the
new system) a formality and dignity which is in some measure
commensurate with the importance of the Act and the gravity of
its consequences; it is no longer possible to “railroad” aliens
in groups to the naturalization courts, in defiance of the law
and in disregard of even an appearance of propriety; the courts
which have jurisdiction are no longer such as are “devoted largely
to the trifling and indecent affairs of the community,” and the
conferring of citizenship is, in this respect, no longer “ranked
with disturbing the peace or keeping an unlicensed dog,” as it was
expressed by a judge of a court in describing the conditions under
the old law.
And in his seventh report, for 1913-14, to the Secretary of Labor,
Mr. Campbell remarked that:
To those who will take the trouble to compare the chaotic and
disorderly conditions which characterized the procedure for
more than a century of our national existence with the dignity,
uniformity, and regularity of the present system, it must appear to
be a matter of inexplicable carelessness that the reform should so
long have been delayed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account